Monday, January 15, 2007

Occasionally I wonder if I will run out of writing material as my children grow (and by assumption mature). There are so many great stories from when they were younger that I doubt the teenage years could be so literarily fruitful. Here's an example:

From my journal dated April 18, 2005, Lillian was 2, David 6 and Spencer 8:

On Saturday after our week’s worth of spring cleaning I told the kids I'd take them to the library. All of us, including Andrew, went and after collecting new books on the main floor we had to take the elevator to access the fourth floor where the movies and CDs are kept.

We entered the elevator with a tall, middle-aged woman carrying some books and the kids each moved to stand with their backs against the walls of the car, their own books in hand. The doors closed and we had that obligatory silence that always ensues in elevators without even the benefit of some soothing background music to fill the empty air.

It's a particularly slow elevator and we were nearly t0 the fourth floor when suddenly, breaking the silence in her loud and unusually clear little voice, Lillian spoke.

“Spank my buttocks!” she said cheerfully. It couldn't have been one of those times when no one understood her, when her words were garbled and her vocabulary unintelligible--no, she came out clear as a bell.

“Spank my buttocks!” she said once more. The woman looked at her and tried very hard and very politely to hide her amusement while my jaw was on the floor. The kids thought it was hugely entertaining, and busted up with laughter, none more so than Spencer, who it turns out taught her that choice phrase.

I wanted to show him right there in the elevator how willing I was to comply with his suggestion and really help his buttocks learn a lesson about teaching things to his little sister but those kinds of things always happen in public places and the children sense my impotence. By the time we'd returned home my embarrassment had given way to the humor of the situation.

lol. A friend of mine who before having children was a merciless teaser of other people - delighting in their embarrasment - reaped what he'd sown one day when he was standing on a crowded train platform with his 4 year old son. In the same kind of clear and loud voice you described, his son looked up at him and said (with a perplexed expression) "You're not my Dad!"

Thats so funny! Teens still have lots of funny things to blog about, they just don't want you to, lol. I enjoy more embarrassing them now, because its just so easy! I had a bumper sticker that I put on my fridge that they couldn't stand "I was put on this earth to embarrass my teens in front of their friends." It disappeared one day.... Unfortunately for them, their friends think we are cool. And you can tell stories of when they did stupid things and they will get embarrassed and that is fun. Yep, teen years are for parents to get revenge for all the ruined carpets and broken nick-knacks, not to mention the puke and poop clean-ups.